Johnathan Corgan
40c67abbe6
Five files conflicted and each needed a different call, because the two lines had rewritten different halves of the same code. The handshake handler takes next's version whole. master's entire change there was three comment blocks and one widened debug_assert, and the assert names HandshakePhase::ReceivedMsg1, a variant next's XX rewrite does not have. Nothing semantic was dropped. The peer reaper takes master's: reap_peers_on_transport is new and its route_link_dead doc now describes both callers, which is true on this line too. The ethernet transport takes master's binder rewrite with next's wire format re-applied on top. The send path, the receive path and the frame tests merged to the 4-byte header on their own, but three sites are new in master's rewrite and had never seen it: the Binding default and both arms of the binder's MTU calculation still subtracted 3. The transports snapshot fixture moved with them, 1499 to 1496, and that single field was the whole diff. Beacons carry no pubkey here, so local_pubkey leaves the transport, its binder context and the node's transport construction with it. The changelog keeps both sides' entries, with master's Added subsection lifted back out of Changed where the merge had left it. Two tests do not come across. a_transient_msg2_failure_keeps_the_link_for_ the_retry and its restart-path sibling assert that the machine rests at ReceivedMsg1. This line's nearest state is SentMsg2, and it means something else: the inbound leg parks there awaiting msg3, where on the other line that phase was the last stop before promotion. Renaming it would produce a test that passes without exercising the deferral. The behaviour they guard did merge and sits in the transient arm of the msg2 send failure; what is missing is coverage shaped for this handshake, which is tracked separately. The two connected-socket tests did come across. Their helper took the responder's session straight after msg2, which is an IK assumption; it now runs msg3 as well. Both pass here and both go red when the clear is removed or made unconditional. The test-harness fixes arrive through master rather than as follow-ups here, so this line never carries the versions that failed: the interface-binding suite's veth naming, and the chaos veth restore, random streams, settle wait, netem restore and shared down-node set.
Tutorials
If you have just installed FIPS, this is where to start. The tutorials below take you from a freshly-installed daemon to a node that:
- Has joined the public test mesh and can reach other nodes on it.
- Carries a stable identity that other operators can address.
- Discovers peers — and is discoverable — over Nostr.
- Hosts and consumes real services across the mesh.
Each tutorial is a complete, working session at the keyboard. You configure something, restart the daemon, watch it come up, and verify the result. The point is to build muscle memory, not to cover every option.
Read them in order. Each tutorial assumes the state the previous one left you in. If you skip ahead, the cross-references that lead you back may not match what you have on disk.
The new-user progression
| # | Tutorial | What you'll do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | join-the-test-mesh.md | Add one public test peer to your config, watch the link come up, ping that peer and a second mesh node it routes you to. The starting point for everything else. |
| 2 | persistent-identity.md | Pin your daemon to a stable Nostr keypair so your address stops changing on every restart. Other operators can now add you to their peers: lists; the services you host get a fixed name. |
| 3 | resolve-peers-via-nostr.md | Stop hard-coding peer addresses. Drop the address line from your peer entry and let the daemon look up the current endpoint from public Nostr relays at dial time. |
| 4 | advertise-your-node.md | Publish your own UDP endpoint to Nostr so any operator who knows your npub can reach you, with a short final section on udp:nat best-effort hole-punching for nodes without a directly reachable UDP endpoint. |
| 5 | open-discovery.md | Switch to policy: open and let your peer list populate itself from the ambient fips-overlay-v1 namespace. Hands-off mesh participation. |
| 6 | reach-mesh-services.md | Drive ordinary IPv6 tools — ping6, nc, traceroute6, curl, ssh — at mesh nodes by <npub>.fips. Get a feel for the daemon's IPv6 adapter, which makes unmodified IPv6 software work over the mesh. |
| 7 | host-a-service.md | Bring up an HTTP server bound to fips0 so mesh nodes can reach it, with a deliberate exposure decision (mesh-only vs every interface), and the mesh firewall as a default-deny baseline. The peer ACL (a separate, transport-layer control over which npubs may peer with your node) is briefly mentioned alongside. |
| 8 | ground-up-mesh.md | Bring up a second deployment mode: two devices joined by Ethernet (or WiFi, or BLE) with no IP infrastructure between them. The mesh emerges from layer 2 up. Coexists with overlay peers — the same daemon can carry both. |
After tutorial 8 you have a fully participating mesh node that reaches services hosted by other mesh nodes and hosts services of its own, with identity, discovery, reachability, an explicit exposure policy, and an understanding of both deployment modes — overlay on top of existing IP, and ground-up where the mesh is the network.
There are also two side trips you can take:
-
ipv6-adapter-walkthrough.md — trace one
sshfrom DNS query through session setup to the far-side TUN, usingfipstopandfipsctlto watch each step. Optional, but if you like seeing how the pieces fit together, this is the doc that shows you. Take it any time after tutorial 1. -
native-api-walkthrough.md — write a program against the experimental native datagram API, addressing a peer by public key and port with no IPv6 emulation and no TUN. Runs two throwaway nodes on one machine, so it needs no mesh and no root, and you can take it without doing the tutorials first.
Advanced
These are not part of the new-user progression. They assume you have already worked through the tutorials above and now want to fold FIPS into a wider network deployment.
- deploy-fips-gateway.md — Stand up a
fips-gatewayon an OpenWrt access point so unmodified LAN hosts can reach<npub>.fipsdestinations through a DNS- allocated virtual IPv6 pool and kernel nftables NAT, with no per-host FIPS install. Also walks through one inbound port forward exposing a LAN service to mesh peers. Aimed at operators bridging a LAN segment into the overlay from the edge router. For a non-OpenWrt host the same deployment is in ../how-to/deploy-gateway.md.
When to use the how-to guides instead
The tutorials here walk through one specific path each. The how-to guides under ../how-to/ are the operator recipes — alternative provisioning paths, less-common configurations, troubleshooting techniques. Once you have the shape of FIPS in your head from these tutorials, the how-tos are where you'll go to look up "how do I do X?" without being walked through the surrounding context.